To take a single step beyond the text would be to take possession of a boundless field of power.

I long to be in the midst of the children, and have more pleasure in their little follies than in the wisdom of the wise.

The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subject to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others.

The contest is not between us and them, but between good and evil, and if those who would fight evil adopt the ways of evil, evil wins.

And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

No generation has a right to contract debts greater than can be paid off during the course of its own existence.

The attempt of Lavoisier to reform chemical nomenclature is premature. One single experiment may destroy the whole filiation of his terms; and his string of sulphates, sulphites, and sulphures, may have served no end than to have retarded the progress of science by a jargon, from the confusion of which time will be requisite to extricate us.